Related Links:

Energy Trust and the Big Hope

Weatherizing Portland

National Day of Action Against Coal

Related Links:

Gucci Group commits to saving Indonesia’s rainforests

Report: Forest conservation can be as reliable as other ways of reducing pollution

Brazil’s Lula vows to slow rate of Amazon deforestation

HELSINKI—Environmental groups on Thursday blasted Finnish paper maker Stora Enso for logging old growth forests in northern Finland, insisting the unique trees should be protected.

Environmental groups Greenpeace, Suomen Luonnonsuojeluliitto and Luonto-Liitto said they had found that some trees more than 300 years old had been logged in Finnish Lapland in the north of the country and shipped to Stora Enso’s pulp mill in Oulu.

The logged forests, also known as old growth forests or ancient woodlands, are owned by the Finnish state.

“It is unbelievable that at a time when forestry companies have slashed their production sharply, untouchable forests are logged,” Risto Mustonen from Luonto-Liitto said in a statement.

Old growth forests are often home to rare, threatened and endangered species of plants and animals, making them ecologically significant.

Stora Enso said it had bought the wood from the state and admitted it was possible that some very old trees were included.

“We don’t need ancient trees and our production cannot be based on that,” Stora Enso’s environmental manager Pekka Kallio-Mannila said.

Environmentalists have since 2006 urged Metsähallitus, a state enterprise managing state-owned land and water areas, to conserve larger forests in the north. So far the parties have failed to reach an agreement.

Meanwhile, Metsähallitus said the state had reviewed carefully its forests and noted that there were large conservation areas in Finnish Lapland as well.

“The forests in question are commercial forests. By no means are they old or indispensable forests,” Metsähallitus regional director Kirsi-Maria Korhonen said.

“The average age of those trees is not 300 years but between 80 and 200 years.”

Stora Enso’s Kallio-Mannila said deciding which forests to conserve was not easy and called for more dialogue with environmental groups and forest owners.

The forestry industry is important to the Finnish economy, accounting to nearly one-fifth of the country’s exports.

The global financial crisis has further dented demand and profitability of Finnish paper makers, which have announced massive job and capacity cuts.

Related Links:

Oregon group fights national forest logging near Crater Lake

Grist profiled in Finnish paper—read all about it

Prince Charles introduces his rainforests project

A mob of some 3,000 people trashed a government office in Paragominas, Brazil, on Monday to protest the government's crackdown on illegal logging. Environment Minister Carlos Minc says the riot will not deter anti-logging efforts.

sources:

Related Links:

Obama headed to Copenhagen, sets the bar for success

Obama going to Copenhagen

‘Copenhagen Diagnosis’ offers a grim update to the IPCC’s climate science

Related Links:

Where the Sahara meets the Atlantic

Meet your new national parks chief

Washington warming and wildfires: The science behind the story

Indonesian authorities have agreed to halt deforestation on the island of Sumatra, which has lost about half of its forest cover to logging since 1985. Conservationists joined Sumatran tigers, orangutans, rhinos, and elephants in applauding the deal, launched at the World Conservation Congress being held this week. Deforestation has increased the impact of flooding and forest fires on the island, not to mention cramping the style of the 200 mammal species and 580 bird species that live there: in one of Sumatra's 10 provinces, the elephant population has dropped 84 percent and the tiger population 70 percent in the last 20 years. In addition, more than 13 percent of the island's trees grow in peat, which stores vast amounts of carbon that would be let loose if the trees were removed.

Related Links:

Obama headed to Copenhagen, sets the bar for success

Obama going to Copenhagen

‘Copenhagen Diagnosis’ offers a grim update to the IPCC’s climate science

An Idaho-specific plan meant to replace President Clinton's national roadless rule in the state was agreed to Friday by the Bush administration, timber interests, and a few environmental groups. If approved by the Secretary of Agriculture after a public-comment period, the revised rule would protect just 3.3 million acres of forestlands in the state, down from 9.3 million in Clinton's original roadless rule. Over 400,000 acres of current roadless areas in the state would be open to development with no restrictions, worrying environmental groups who are opposed to the plan that those areas could be mined and subjected to other destructive practices that were restricted under the original rule. Another 5.6 million acres of "roadless" forestlands could be subject to logging (and its attendant roads) if it's determined that logging could reduce fire risk to communities. Environmental groups Trout Unlimited and the Idaho Conservation League have backed the plan while the Wilderness Society and others have criticized the compromise, arguing that national forest lands protected by the original roadless rule "should be left roadless and undeveloped."

sources:

Related Links:

Obama headed to Copenhagen, sets the bar for success

Obama going to Copenhagen

‘Copenhagen Diagnosis’ offers a grim update to the IPCC’s climate science

The amount of old-growth forest designated as critical habitat for the northern spotted owl was slashed 23 percent, or 1.6 million acres, by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Tuesday. One might think that means that spotted owls are doing well for themselves, but no: the spotted owl population is dropping by 4 percent each year. Despite widespread efforts to protect their Northwest old-growth home, the birds continue to lose habitat to logging, wildfires, and the aggressive barred owl. A federal study released last month warned that the remaining spotted owls lack genetic diversity, which may send them even more quickly toward extinction. "I have not lost hope for spotted owls," says wildlife geneticist Susan Haig, "but I think we're at a pretty serious crossroads." The federal axing of critical-habitat acreage resulted from a settlement with the timber industry, which complained that the 5.3 million acres left as critical habitat is still too much.

sources:

Related Links:

Obama headed to Copenhagen, sets the bar for success

Obama going to Copenhagen

‘Copenhagen Diagnosis’ offers a grim update to the IPCC’s climate science

Orangutans are on their way toward extinction, says a new study that points out worrying declines in fuzzy-orange-ape populations. Orangutans only live in the wild on the islands of Sumatra and Borneo; the Sumatra orangutan population has dropped nearly 14 percent since 2004, while the Borneo population has fallen 10 percent. "Unless extraordinary efforts are made soon, it could become the first great ape species to go extinct," wrote researchers publishing in the journal Oryx. Illegal logging and palm-oil production are the main culprits; orangutan-lovers hold on to hope that any imminent international climate pact will include incentives for halting deforestation.

Related Links:

Obama headed to Copenhagen, sets the bar for success

Obama going to Copenhagen

‘Copenhagen Diagnosis’ offers a grim update to the IPCC’s climate science

Plum Creek Timber, which just negotiated a giant conservation deal with green groups, has also made a closed-door deal with the U.S. Forest Service that could ease the way for development on thousands of acres of Montana forestland. For decades, the USFS has enforced restrictions on logging roads that allow them to only be used for timber management. But under the deal expected to be formalized next month, logging roads on Plum Creek-owned land could be paved -- easing residential access to deep-woods summer homes. Plum Creek, a former logging company which now focuses on real-estate investment, says that in the next five years, it's likely to sell no more than 3,000 of its 1.2 million Montana acres to developers. But environmentalists are skeptical. "Now that Plum Creek is getting out of the timber business, we're kind of missing the loggers," says Ray Rasker of nonprofit Headwaters Economics. "A clear-cut will grow back, but a subdivision of trophy homes -- that's going to be that way forever."

Related Links:

Obama headed to Copenhagen, sets the bar for success

Obama going to Copenhagen

‘Copenhagen Diagnosis’ offers a grim update to the IPCC’s climate science

There's no better way to start off a Monday than with depressing news from the Peruvian Amazon, which is under threat from both fossil-fuel development and illegal logging. Despite protests from environmental and human rights groups, Peru's government plans to auction off dozens of parcels of remote rainforest for oil and gas companies to explore. And in even more somber news, Peruvian community leader Julio García Agapito was recently shot to death after trying to report illegal logging in the Amazon, a murder sadly reminiscent of the past deaths of anti-logging activists Chico Mendes and Dorothy Stang.

sources:

Related Links:

Obama headed to Copenhagen, sets the bar for success

Obama going to Copenhagen

‘Copenhagen Diagnosis’ offers a grim update to the IPCC’s climate science

Related Links:

Where the Sahara meets the Atlantic

Meet your new national parks chief

Everything you always wanted to know about EPA greenhouse gas regulations, but were afraid to ask

Related Links:

Environmental education in Guinea Bissau

This Friday, don’t just Buy Nothing—use nothing!

Growing up green: How to shop for a green baby

Following Brazil's recent announcement of a dramatic rise in Amazon deforestation in the country in the last months of 2007, the country this week announced new plans to try to slow the destruction. Plans include tapping the army to conduct inspections of known problem areas and keep deforested land from being cultivated or used for pasture, fining meat processors and soy buyers that purchase products originating from deforested areas, and denying credit to landowners who don't maintain preservation areas. Brazil's environment minister, Marina Silva, attributed the spike in deforestation to rising prices for corn, soy, and meat on the international market. An estimated 2,700 square miles of Amazon rainforest was destroyed in Brazil last year between August and December, with over half of it happening in November and December alone. If the country's new plan doesn't work, Silva said, Brazil "will have an environmental loss and an economic loss."

Related Links:

Obama headed to Copenhagen, sets the bar for success

Obama going to Copenhagen

‘Copenhagen Diagnosis’ offers a grim update to the IPCC’s climate science

Related Links:

Toward a medically defensible energy policy

Ask Umbra on trash, toxics, and tots

Ask Umbra on shower caps, computers, and junk mail

Related Links:

Environmental education in Guinea Bissau

Washington governor isn’t falling for big geoengineering fixes

Brazil offer to reduce deforestation by 80%

Big-box behemoths Sears and Kmart have agreed to phase out nasty plastic PVC from all products in their 3,800 stores. While admirable, the announcement merely makes those stores the lemmings of PVC abandonment; IKEA, Wal-Mart, and Target have all previously agreed to go PVC-free. In other big-box news, the nonprofit Environmental Investigation Agency has accused Wal-Mart of sourcing wood for its products from Chinese manufacturers who use Russian timber that was likely logged illegally. Wal-Mart, the largest U.S. importer of wood products, has publicly announced a goal to use only sustainably harvested wood by 2010. Meanwhile, Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) accused Wal-Mart of selling ornaments produced in a Chinese sweatshop with low labor and environmental standards. So, uh, maybe you shouldn't go big-box holiday shopping after all.

Related Links:

Obama headed to Copenhagen, sets the bar for success

Obama going to Copenhagen

‘Copenhagen Diagnosis’ offers a grim update to the IPCC’s climate science

Hundreds of Mexican police raided illegal sawmills near a monarch butterfly reserve yesterday in "the largest seizure of illegally logged wood in the country's history," according to the attorney general's office. Millions of butterflies travel some 2,500 miles each winter to spend the cold season in the Mexican forest, where illegal logging is rampant. The Mexican government has long pledged to crack down on logging in butterfly habitat, but previous administrations have been criticized for not following through. Within the past year, the current government has closed 59 sawmills and charged 193 people with related crimes; in yesterday's raid, agents seized some 600 truckloads of wood -- the equivalent to about 1,750 adult trees -- and detained 56 people. Suspects found guilty of illegal logging could face prison sentences of six months to nine years, fines of up to $13,650, and the eternal wrath of small, winged insects.

source:

Related Links:

Obama headed to Copenhagen, sets the bar for success

Obama going to Copenhagen

‘Copenhagen Diagnosis’ offers a grim update to the IPCC’s climate science

Millions of butterflies clapped their tiny wings as Mexican President Felipe Calderon yesterday announced a plan to curb logging and protect habitat for migrating monarchs. Mexico has already boosted anti-logging efforts, resulting in a 48 percent drop in illegal tree-chopping in the last year. Calderon hopes the additional funding to be put toward the existing Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve will boost tourism. "It is possible to take care of the environment and at the same time promote development," he said. Ooh, we're all a-flutter.

source:

Related Links:

Obama headed to Copenhagen, sets the bar for success

Obama going to Copenhagen

‘Copenhagen Diagnosis’ offers a grim update to the IPCC’s climate science

Ooh, bummer: The Forest Stewardship Council, trusted certifier of sustainably sourced wood and paper, plans to overhaul its standards after acknowledging that some companies using its label are logging destructively.

Related Links:

Obama headed to Copenhagen, sets the bar for success

Obama going to Copenhagen

‘Copenhagen Diagnosis’ offers a grim update to the IPCC’s climate science